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Rates of Rejected Delay Repay?

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centraltrains

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Is there any information/data available on the quantity of which train companies reject delay repay claims?

After seeing this thread: https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/delay-repay-declined-by-west-midlands-railway.185352/ and remembering my previous experience with WMR on making delay repay claim (Invalid swift card number claimed despite checking... Ended up accidentally being repaid twice), I was wondering if they had a particularly high rate of rejected claims compared to other TOCs?
 
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tony_mac

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bb21

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The overwhelming majority of rejected claims are invalid for various reasons, so these figures won't establish what proportion of valid claims are rejected.
 

mallard

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The overwhelming majority of rejected claims are invalid for various reasons

[Citation needed]

Of course, you can't ask the TOCs about that; as far as they're concerned all claims they reject are "invalid" whether that's actually true or not. For most people, "appealing" a rejection is more hassle than it's worth, especially since the process of doing so is usually entirely unadvertised and undocumented, which is of course what the TOCs are betting on when they issue such rejections.

Delay repay (and other forms of compensation, refunds, etc.) really needs to be processed by an independent body, rather than left to the whims of how generous the TOC is feeling, whether the operative has reached their rejection quota, whether they've been allocated enough time to properly review claims, etc. The claims process should be drastically simplified; a single website covering all TOCs (so passengers don't have to be experts in railway organisation to claim when multiple TOCs are involved), a single form sent to a single address for postal claims and the ability to claim at any staffed ticket office.
 

bb21

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[Citation needed]
Citation is myself.

I can't convince you to believe me, nor do I have the desire to have everyone believe me, but I can quite confidently say I am one of the most knowledgeable ones on the forum when it comes to this matter.
 

talldave

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[Citation needed]

Of course, you can't ask the TOCs about that; as far as they're concerned all claims they reject are "invalid" whether that's actually true or not.....
Maybe you can't ask the TOCs but you could perhaps infer that some of the informed replies on here come from contributors much closer to the actual data than you or I.

Rather than being deemed invalid, my latest claim with Southeastern just vanished. They deny receiving it despite sending me an acknowledgement email - which I've now had to convert to a pdf and upload to them (nothing as simple as an email address you can reply/forward to with Southeastern!).
 

bb21

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Maybe you can't ask the TOCs but you could perhaps infer that some of the informed replies on here come from contributors much closer to the actual data than you or I.
Thank you.

I'll elaborate a little further just to clarify things a bit more without going into too much detail. Most rejected claims tend to fall into several common categories, eg. mistyped/selected stations (drop-down box, etc), misidentified train ID, misidentified dates, insufficient delay. These are all surprisingly common errors.

Some TOCs now also use automated systems to process initial claims, so any incorrect detail submitted can result in an automatic rejection, whereas claims processed by people tend to get a second look to pick out any obvious mistake, but that more often happens at an escalated stage now, where the customer provided more details about their journey and a more comprehensive assessment can be made, including second-guessing the date they actually meant, which I have had to do numerous times before personally. This also means an upheld appeal does not automatically mean the original rejection was incorrect.

That by and large works well.

Where there tends to be an issue is when the timetable had changed, and an originally intended service no longer existed. This is where evidence of the intended itinerary (in whatever readable format available) can be helpful to caseworkers. The legal position on whether a delay should be measured against a revised timetable or the original (no longer existent) timetable is also a tad vague AFAIK, even though there are various claims on the forum on what the supposed legal position is (which is a discussion for another thread), so I won't claim to know exactly what the answer is.

I won't get into the validity of claims surrounding split tickets either as there seems to be a bit of inconsistency surrounding how they are handled. Clearer guidelines from RDG would help, provided an agreement amongst TOCs is reached. Both of these issues constitute a very small proportion of claims, and in any case, if the amount involved is relatively small, often the claim is paid regardless as having to deal with it a third time, or possibly more, can be more expensive in terms of resources required.

What is more an inherent issue in the Delay Repay system in my opinion is that many people won't bother claiming small amounts. I don't do it myself because I don't consider spending 5 minutes claiming £1.50 is a good use of my time. With the introduction of Delay Repay 15, these small amounts are becoming more common.
 

35B

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The overwhelming majority of rejected claims are invalid for various reasons, so these figures won't establish what proportion of valid claims are rejected.
Understood, but the proportions of claims rejected compared across operators would give an indication of whether some may be harder or softer in their assessment of claims than others. I would be surprised if there is that material a difference in error rates between customers of different TOCs, though I can imagine there may be some between long and short distance operators.
 

bb21

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Understood, but the proportions of claims rejected compared across operators would give an indication of whether some may be harder or softer in their assessment of claims than others. I would be surprised if there is that material a difference in error rates between customers of different TOCs, though I can imagine there may be some between long and short distance operators.
There are several factors that may influence rejection rates. An automated system versus a manual system would throw up a slightly different profile, intercity TOCs versus commuter-heavy TOCs would also likely be different, etc. Base claim numbers also vary wildly due to comparative size differences in different franchises making figures for some smaller companies more volatile.

For big discrepancies in rejection rates there may be some truths in it, but I can't say with any degree of confidence I would be happy to draw any conclusion from the numbers involved, especially considering some of the laughable gibberish quoted in the Yorkshire Post.
 

AlterEgo

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Understood, but the proportions of claims rejected compared across operators would give an indication of whether some may be harder or softer in their assessment of claims than others.

Not really - one of the reasons claims may be rejected is because the delay falls short of the threshold, and different companies have different thresholds. That's the main reason Grand Central reject over 40% of theirs, for example.

Another factor is that people will often claim from the retailer of the ticket rather than the TOC which caused the delay, which is one of the reasons Virgin - who sell millions of tickets online - had to reject so many or pass them to a third party.

Another factor is that many times, the Delay Repay claim is not for that at all, but rather a ticket refund for an abandoned journey.

Another factor is customer confusion - Virgin regularly got claims meant for CrossCountry even though they last operated that franchise in 2007.

There are so many factors at play that it makes any statistics about how many are rejected unsuitable to draw any conclusions from.
 

tomwills98

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I don't know if other TOC's have rejection quotas but mine certainly doesn't. We have a target for the number of cases we complete that come through our normal email system so we meet the target set in the passenger's charter and by the ORR, but there's no target for DR claims. We're just told to clear as much of them as possible from the seemingly never-ending well that needs manual validation.

A claim can be rejected for a number of reasons, could be staff error which is normally resolved on appeal or if they phone it through. If the delay is under fifteen minutes. COuld be customer error where they put in the wrong journey details or if the compensation has been issued for their journey on a different claim.

It would be nice to see the number of rejections but it also needs to show why to get a proper comparison of different TOC's.
 

robbeech

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The automated system is clearly a good idea as it can resolve claims easily and efficiently and people get paid quicker. The trouble is, certain TOCs who use this simply cannot have programmed it correctly. A triple checked example was a cancelled service between two stations in the North. The next service was an hour later and it itself ran around 15L. There’s absolutely no question that someone with an advance single for the service that was cancelled is eligible for compensation if they travel on the next one. Upon entering all the details, selecting the service, uploading a high quality image of the ticket (which has been marked) and submitting the claim it was decided after around 2 weeks that they didn’t travel and as such they should go to the retailer for a refund. This went back and forth for a further month before being escalated to the Ombudsman who dealt with it within 48 hours and the compensation was duly paid.
It’s clear that this case was looked at by more than 1 real person, and they all decided to try it on with the passenger. There’s no financial incentive to improve training as this will cost money.

Another example with 4 people with 4 identical tickets on the same train, claim separately, 1 is paid, 3 are rejected with 3 different rejection reasons, all of which are of course incorrect. So to use that example, the rate of incorrectly rejected claims was 75%. And as it was a small amount, many people would give up at that point. 1 of the 3 rejections required 1 appeal, 1 required 3 rounds of emails and a phone call to complain and 1 of the 3 rejections went to the ombudsman where it was accepted and the TOC paid.

No matter whether this type of unacceptable behaviour from the TOCs is deliberate or down to incompetence it shows without doubt that they are keeping revenue that they are not due and getting away with it. It comes across to passengers as if they’re deliberately doing them out of the money they’re due and it seems nothing will or can be done about it.

<details of both cases above are available>
 

tomwills98

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The automated system is clearly a good idea as it can resolve claims easily and efficiently and people get paid quicker. The trouble is, certain TOCs who use this simply cannot have programmed it correctly. A triple checked example was a cancelled service between two stations in the North. The next service was an hour later and it itself ran around 15L. There’s absolutely no question that someone with an advance single for the service that was cancelled is eligible for compensation if they travel on the next one. Upon entering all the details, selecting the service, uploading a high quality image of the ticket (which has been marked) and submitting the claim it was decided after around 2 weeks that they didn’t travel and as such they should go to the retailer for a refund. This went back and forth for a further month before being escalated to the Ombudsman who dealt with it within 48 hours and the compensation was duly paid.
It’s clear that this case was looked at by more than 1 real person, and they all decided to try it on with the passenger. There’s no financial incentive to improve training as this will cost money.

Another example with 4 people with 4 identical tickets on the same train, claim separately, 1 is paid, 3 are rejected with 3 different rejection reasons, all of which are of course incorrect. So to use that example, the rate of incorrectly rejected claims was 75%. And as it was a small amount, many people would give up at that point. 1 of the 3 rejections required 1 appeal, 1 required 3 rounds of emails and a phone call to complain and 1 of the 3 rejections went to the ombudsman where it was accepted and the TOC paid.

No matter whether this type of unacceptable behaviour from the TOCs is deliberate or down to incompetence it shows without doubt that they are keeping revenue that they are not due and getting away with it. It comes across to passengers as if they’re deliberately doing them out of the money they’re due and it seems nothing will or can be done about it.

<details of both cases above are available>

I know certain TOC's DR systems are made by the same people so should work in exactly the same way. Sometime's it's more down to how the information is interpreted by the person receiving the claim.

The first one is laughable. It seems less like they were "trying it on" and all need to be told how to read a clock and their own passenger's charter.

The second example is quite common if passengers were travelling in a group and claiming separately. The DR system is smart but can easily become stuck when verifying the serial number and NLC code on a group's tickets. It will allow the first one, then remember the ticket for the following claims and flag them up for suspected fraud. A human then comes along and with the Mk1 eyeball and zoom key sees the tickets are different and allows it to proceed.

If you can see a group claiming all have the same journey details, same address, same compensation details, and the photo of the tickets shows all of the group's tickets, it's easier for everyone to raise one payment for everyone, than payment each. As long as the TOC explains what they've done and for the customer to expect the cases rejected it's fine.

Whilst there's no monetary incentive to train staff, there's a time one. There's a timeframe each TOC has to respond to customers which is set by the ORR and they are fairly on the ball if timekeeping starts slipping. Improper case handling only increases the response time as staff are taken away to rectify their past mistakes, and the department may get a fine if it's really bad and can't explain why they aren't shifting cases.

If you've got the examples to hand can you please send them over, would love to have a look?
 

56 1/2

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If a TOC rejects or obstructs a refund claim to such an extent as to be AVOIDANCE should not the TOC be surcharged to the same extent as a fare avoiding traveler v an RPI?
 

ForTheLoveOf

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If a TOC rejects or obstructs a refund claim to such an extent as to be AVOIDANCE should not the TOC be surcharged to the same extent as a fare avoiding traveler v an RPI?
Unfortunately the law is incredibly biased towards TOCs in this regard and it is very difficult to find an offence which fits such behaviour.
 

robbeech

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The second example is quite common if passengers were travelling in a group and claiming separately. The DR system is smart but can easily become stuck when verifying the serial number and NLC code on a group's tickets. It will allow the first one, then remember the ticket for the following claims and flag them up for suspected fraud. A human then comes along and with the Mk1 eyeball and zoom key sees the tickets are different and allows it to proceed.

If you can see a group claiming all have the same journey details, same address, same compensation details, and the photo of the tickets shows all of the group's tickets, it's easier for everyone to raise one payment for everyone, than payment each. As long as the TOC explains what they've done and for the customer to expect the cases rejected it's fine.

For reference these were 4 separate people with 4 names, 4 addresses, 4 different transactions, from 4 different bank accounts / payment cards from more than 1 retailer (one of which was the TOC itself and this wasn’t the one that was paid straight away).

I see the point about groups travelling on group tickets or similar and how an automated system may reject this, though 2 of the 4 (not group) claims were rejected even after an actual person had looked and 1 had to be escalated to the Ombudsman.

As mentioned, this is 1 case and is unlikely to be isolated, and the more it happens the more difficult it is to believe that it’s a ‘mistake’. So many people give up for anything under a tenner and that must make the TOCs significant money all added up.
 

robbeech

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Save the TOC money, surely?

As an end figure, profit will be higher if less people claim, or in keeping with the topic, less people successfully claim.
‘Save’ is likely a more accurate word though.
 

najaB

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As an end figure, profit will be higher if less people claim, or in keeping with the topic, less people successfully claim.
‘Save’ is likely a more accurate word though.
Okay. Just wasn't sure if we were going to go down the "TOCs make profit from NR delay payments" route again.
 
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